A City Lost and Found

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IT COULD have been dull and prosaic. That it is not is because
Robyn Annear saw well beyond the mere truth of Melbourne's evolving
built environment, and understood that construction and,
eventually, removal tell us how the city became what it is.

Removal is the polite way to say wrecking, and Melbourne's
history reverberates with tales of almost callous and opportunistic
development throughout the city centre.

Long before historians, preservationists and the plain
sentimental existed to rail against the razing of perfectly
acceptable buildings on a whim fuelled by a whiff of profit,
Melbourne's skyline was the plaything of men with dreams and
ambitions - not all of them worthy.

From the gold rush of the 1850s until now, the city's streets
and buildings have been reshaped with a constancy that offsets the
benefits of productivity and employment against the need to define,
then perpetuate, the supposed character of the place.

Annear cleverly explores this theme by telling of the city's
skyline through the existence of its most famous shaper -
Whelan the Wrecker. She charts the way the business was so
intertwined with the vicissitudes of Melbourne's many booms and
busts, from the time young Jim Whelan arrived from Stawell in 1884
with £2 in his pocket, to 1991-92, when a recession and
impatient bankers with little sense of history forced the company
into voluntary liquidation.

This book could have lamented the wrecker's ball and its impact,
but Annear looks past that and relates an appreciation of the
possibilities created by Whelan.

As she notes, quoting an older source: "The perpetuation of
history in layers is the habit of mankind. Raze first, and raise
anew."

Explaining her perceptions of the wrecker's craft, Annear writes
of looking at photos of "beaming Whelans amid the bones and rubble
of gutted city landmarks".

"It never occurred to me that their business was destruction,"
she writes.

"It was revelation, surely - bringing hidden things to light. A
kind of archaeology with gusto."

Jim Whelan first "wrecked" some Brunswick cottages during the
land bust of the 1890s, although, as Annear points out, it was more
a salvage opportunity. Carting away usable materials to a timber
yard, Whelan started making money reselling it.

How Annear transforms a potentially pedestrian recounting of
buildings going up and down is by revealing the character of city
blocks, buildings and inhabitants.

She takes us back to each decade with scene-setting anecdotes of
crooks, drunks, toffs and the socially upstanding. And the
buildings? Well, Whelan was called on to dismantle some that
perhaps should have been saved, but also to rid Melbourne of some
firetraps and harbours of mischief.

It was 1921, Annear notes, when the sign "Whelan the wrecker is
here" made its entry into Melbourne's chequered history and, by the
1950s, our vernacular.

Demolishing a Swanston Street property, one of Whelan's crew
carved the famous claim into the ruins of a darkroom. Annear
correctly explains how "Whelan the Wrecker", over time, developed a
wider meaning.

"Any scene of disorder - a colleague's desk, a teenager's
bedroom, the aftermath of a fondue party - might elicit an
exclamation of 'Whelan the Wrecker was here!' "

The author stitches together this timeline of development both
appropriate and flawed with humour and distinctive phrasing. She
relates little bits of history that took on great moment as the
skyline continued to alter.

From the start, Annear recalls, working for Whelan the Wrecker
was like being part of a happy family. Jim Whelan seemed to attract
good men who applied themselves to the task. Alarmingly, in the
early days, these men would risk serious injury, if not their
lives, in the pursuit of Whelan's growing reputation.

They gutted buildings, then brought down the walls by standing
atop them and picking away at the structure below their feet. Jim
Whelan's stoop and uneven gait, Annear reveals, were the legacy of
workplace accidents that today might involve stifling litigation,
but then were shrugged off as perils to be expected.

"In 1911, he was struck on the head by a brick dropped from a
height of six storeys. 'That night he spat blood,' his son Jim
recalled. 'But three days later he was back on the job.' Photos
from that period show him wearing a bowler hat, reputedly stuffed
with cotton wool as a cushion against the next flying brick,"
Annear writes.

Several writers have captured the essence of Melbourne, the
place, and Annear's work is an entertaining addition to that body
of work.

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1126982190147-theage.com.auhttp://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/a-city-lost-and-found/2005/09/23/1126982190147.htmltheage.com.auThe Age2005-09-24A City Lost and FoundSteve WaldonEntertainmentBooksReviews